Battleship Slots from WMS Gaming

Battleship Slots is a WMS Gaming 5-reel slot machine found at
casinos throughout North America. Paylines can be 20, 30, or 40,
depending on the game options you select. Casinos throughout Las
Vegas, Atlantic City, and Tunica have versions of the gaming
machine. So do certain tribal gaming casinos. An online version
of Battleship slots can be found at websites which use Williams
Interactive software. This page reviews both versions of the
game.

The slot machine's theme is based on a Parker Brothers board
game, but the artwork and animations have a broader focus. Like
the board game, depictions include World War II era battleships.
The game also features pinup art of the World War II era, which
makes the slot machine more visually compelling. With popular
features like a Colossal Reels, people who enjoy WMS Gaming
machines are likely to enjoy Battleship. Unique features like
the Battle Board Feature should enhance that enjoyment.

About the Battleship Board Game

The board game Battleship dates back to World War I era
France. The 2-player game was played under several different
names, including "Battleships" and "Sea Battle". For two
generations, it was not played the way 21st century game
enthusiasts might imagine. Instead, Battleship was a "pen and
pencil game" played mainly in France.

After millions of Americans and British soldiers visited
France during World War II, the game began to gain broader
popularity as an informal game in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1967,
the gaming company Milton Bradley sold the first board game
named Battleship. This was the game modern players know today,
which contains a plastic game board and plastic game pieces.

Battleship has been released in many versions
over the years, but the basic principle of the game has always
remained the same.

The game board has a small partition which hides each
player's game pieces. Each side takes turns trying to guess the
location of the other players' ships. These ships consist of
large battleships, smaller destroyers, and even smaller
transports. To begin, players simply guess the location of enemy
ships. These ships are located on a grid, so players call out a
grid location (for instance, "E5") they want to target.

If their opponent's ship sits on that grid location, they
call out "hit". If it doesn't, they simply say "miss". Players
take turns calling out locations, one at a time. Once a hit is
registered, the player uses deduction to find and destroy the
enemy ships, because other nearby grid locations also should
contain parts of the ship, which are 3 to 5 grid spaces long. If
all spaces a ship occupies are hit, the player tells their
opponent that the ship is destroyed. In the 1970s commercial,
one player tells another, "You sank my battleship!"

Music and Animations

The music on Battleship Slots evokes the Big Band swing music
of the 1940s. It is much different than the musical selections
on most other brick-and-mortar or online slot machines. While
the music might be from the World War 2 era, we have a passing
familiarity with the genre and we've never heard the tunes. One
of the songs sounds like a version of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy",
though.

The animations are first rate. Imagine WWII pinup art and
that's what you can expect to see. The most commonly seen
picture is a woman in a sailor-themed outfit, though it's a bit
more revealing than most sailor outfits you've ever seen. Anyone
who enjoys the fashions of the 1940s should enjoy the artwork
and animations. Some of the pinup girls bore a passing
resemblance to specific Hollywood starlets of the time, though
this is not a licensed product.

Bonus Rounds and Base Game Themes

Battleship Slots has three bonus rounds. These are as
follows.

Bomber's Run Bonus

Free Spins Victory Bonus

Find and Conquer Bonus

It also has several base game themes which enhance the
player's enjoyment, such as the Periscope Pays, Commanding
Officer, Brigade, and Grand Armada themes.

Team Feature

In brick-and-mortar casinos, players have the option to play
in team contests. Players become a part of "Team Red" or "Team
Blue". When you walk up to the slot machine bank, you'll have
the option to play either one. The competition requires you to
sink the ships of the players on their other team. The winners
receive bonus rewards.

Colossal Reels

The main reel on the game is 5x4, which is one of several
standard reel sizes. The Colossal Reel feature offers a 5x12
reels on the right side of the screen. This side reel spins
while your main game plays, offering a chance for many other
paylines to activate on any given spin. What makes the Colossal
Reel so nice on Battleship is the inclusion of the "Full Reel
Wild" feature, which is discussed among the Spin Enhancements
listed below.

Spin Enhancements

WMS Gaming offers several "spin enhancements" on the game.
These include wild symbols, free spins, and multiplier. Let's
discuss each of these enhancements.

When the "Spin Enhancement" mode appears, an additional
pop-up graphic appears. This contains a 5x4 grid of icons. The
icons cannot be seen, but are revealed when you touch them on
the touchscreen. You're told to choose three enhancements. In
our experience, players receive bonus enhancements as they go.
For instance, the "5 Free Spins" bonus might offer the "+1x
Feature", too. In reality, most players are likely to receive 4
to 5 enhancements on their bonus game. Once these are chosen,
the player receives all features they have chosen in the bonus
game.

Full Reel Wild

The Full Reel Wild feature is an expanding reel symbol. When
it hits, all four icons on that reel are filled with wild
symbols. This is a powerful spin enhancement, because it also
fills spaces on the Colossal Reel. That's a whopping 12 reel
spaces for a total of 16 wild symbols at a time. This makes the
Full Reel Wild a volatile and exciting game feature.

Five of these symbols appear during Spin Enhancement
selection process. That means your odds of having the Full Reel
Wild symbol in play are pretty good. If you can collect two or
more of these in the bonus mode, you should max out the
non-jackpot payouts. With a 25% chance of collecting one on a
pick and 3 to 5 selections, the chances are roughly 50% to
trigger the Full Reel Wild feature. That means your odds are
roughly 25% to activate two of them.

Wild Symbols

That is not the only wild feature working towards your
advantage. A basic wild symbol is one of the selectable options
in Battleship Slots. The basic wild icon is not as good to have
as the Full Reel Wild, because it represents a single space on
the reels. For that reason, players might be disappointed to see
the wild symbol by itself. Still, this symbol substitutes for
any other symbol on the game.

To give you an indication of what you might activate, basic
wild symbol options we've seen among the Spin Enhancements are
"5 Wilds", "4 Wilds", and "2 Wilds". As mentioned before, this
symbol might appear alongside the bonus feature. Two of the
twenty squares contains both.

+1X Feature

This simply provides a player with an additional spin
enhancement. While it is helpful in the pre-game process, it
provides no help once the reels start spinning.

Spin x2 Multiplier

The spin (x2) multiplier doubles the number of coins you win
on your spins. It's one of the best features to have when the
bonus game starts.

Bonus Credit

Several of the enhancement are bonus coins. In this case, you
receive no in-game advantage. Instead, you collect 200 coins,
400 coins, or 800 coins. Higher coin options might exist, but we
haven't seen it in our Battleship Slots gaming experience.

Battleship Spins Bonus

The Battleship Spins Bonus allows gamblers to pick an
opponent. The player is allowed to select 1 of 5 pinup girls,
who range from brunette to blonde to redhead. Selecting an
opponent activates either the Battleship Bonus, the Submarine
Bonus, or both.

Battleship Spins

Battleship Spins lets you take aim at aircraft carriers,
battleships, destroyers, and patrol boats. Players sink ships by
firing torpedoes at the ships at the top of the screen. The
bigger the boat hit, the higher the bonus you receive. The
bonuses are 1250 coins for a patrol boat, 2500 for a destroyer,
5000 for a battleship, and 12,500 for an aircraft carrier. Like
in the board game, the bigger boats require more hits to trigger
the prize, so the chances of getting a smaller prize is greater.

Submarine Spins

In the Submarine Spin Mode, the player commands a destroyer
which is dropping depth charges in hopes of hitting a submarine.
The more subs you hit, the more you win. This bonus game looks
more like the main game, with both the main reels and colossal
reels spinning. The pace is frenetic and you receive many
chances to hit submarines.

We mentioned before that you can play both games at once.
This happens when you select one of the pinup girls who
corresponds to both. When you make a selection, the machine
shows what each girl would have unlocked. When both game modes
are happening at one, the Battleship Spins take place at the top
of the screen, while the Submarine Spins take place at the
bottom of the screen.

Summary

Colossal Reel pay tables have notoriously low payouts. That
is the main complaint you'll hear about with Battleship Slots
and it's a legitimate complaint. The possibility of a big hit
exists, but it's small compared to games with one single reel.

At the same time, this game has plenty of features and a high
win rate. The chance to activate 2 or 3 Full Reel Wild symbols
at once all-but-assures a payout of more than 10,000 coins at a
time. That happens frequently enough that no one should complain
too much. Just about any gambler is going to be excited to walk
out of the casino with 10,000 times their initial wager.

Some gamblers complain that the videos are not short or
condensed enough. That is a rookie error to complain about such
things. Slots gamblers play (in part) for the entertainment
value of the game. The cut videos are a big part of the
entertainment factor. More importantly, drawing out the game is
better for the player, because they face a high house edge in
slots row. Anything which speeds up play, such as the autoplay
feature and shorter cut videos, is an advantage for the gambler.
The WMS Gaming and Williams Interactive game designers on
Battleship Slots therefore do you a favor by adding less
condensed videos.